Best Psychedelic Books List


Psychedelic books have always constituted a large percentage of my reading time.

From my teenage days when I  traveled far to the city in search of  bookstores stocking anything to do with psychedelia to today where I can have my next book delivered to my ebook reader within seconds. Psychedelic literature of all forms has shaped my understanding of life and continues to inform my decisions.

So in an effort to collate all the psychedelic books I have read and would like to read I have put all the books in a long list of noteworthy titles. 

That done, I was wondering if you guys have any others you would like to recommend ? 




This list is a work in progress so please help me build up a solid collection of psychedelic books that we can share as a resource for people everywhere. I have included all kinds of trippy literature here from drugs, spiritualism, art, music and the science behind the psychedelic experience. 

So if you have any of your own favorites to add please comment in the form below, send me an email or contact me via the Facebook link on the right-side of this blog.

Happy reading !

  • LSD My Problem Child - Albert Hofmann
  • Be Here Now - Ram Dass
  • Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story - Alexander Shulgin, Ann Shulgin
  • LSD - Otto Snow
  • The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe 
  • Sacred Mushroom of Visions  - Ralph Metzner
  • Psychedelic Prayers: And Other Meditations - Timothy Leary
  • Your Brain Is God - Timothy Leary
  • High Priest - Timothy Leary
  • The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead - Timothy Leary
  • The Invisible Landscape  - Terence McKenna, Dennis McKenna
  • Thr Archaic Revival - Terence McKenna
  • True Hallucinations  - Terence McKenna
  • Food of the Gods - Terence McKenna
  • Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
  • The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
  • The Doors Of Perception - Aldous Huxley  
  • Advanced Techniques of Clandestine Psychedelic & Amphetamine Manufacture - Uncle Fester
  • Adventures Beyond the Body - William Buhlman
  • Animals and Psychedelics - Rob Montgomery , Giorgio Samorini
  • The Shaman & Ayahuasca - Don Jose Campos, Geraldine Overton, Alberto Roman, Charles Grob 
  • Ayahuasca Visions - Pablo Amaringo, Luis Luna
  • Sacred Vine of Spirits : Ayahuasca - Ralph Metzner
  • The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge - Jeremy Narby
  • DMT: The Spirit Molecule - Rick Strassman
  • Shedding the Layers - Mark Flaherty
  • The Ayahuasca Diaries - Caspar Greeff
  • Fishers of Men - Adam Elenbaas
  • Heavenly Highs - Peter Stafford
  • Pineal Gland & Third Eye - Dr. Jill Ammon-Wexler
  • Supernatural - Graham Hancock
  • Inner Paths to Outer Space - Rick Strassman
  • The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide - James Fadiman
  • Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing - Michael Muhammad Knight
  • Hallucinogens: A Reader - Charles S. Grob   
  • The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia - Paul Devereux
  • One Pill Makes You Smaller - Lisa Dierbeck
  • The Chemistry of Mind-Altering Drugs - Daniel M. Perrine
  • Peyote and Other Psychoactive Cacti - Adam Gottlieb
  • Peyote : The Divine Cactus - Edward F. Anderson
  • The Hummingbird's Journey to God: Perspectives on San Pedro - Ross Heaven
  • Plant Spirit Shamanism - Ross Heaven, Howard G. Charing
  • Plants of the Gods - Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hofmann, Christian Ratsch
  • Psilocybin Mushroom Handbook - L. G Nicholas, Kerry Ogame
  • Psychedelic Monographs & Essays - Thomas Lyttle
  • The Psychedelic Sacrament - Dan Merkur
  • Off the Wall: Psychedelic Rock Posters from San Francisco - Jean Pierre Criqui 
  • Mushrooms and Mankind - James Arthur
  • The Psychedelic Future of the Mind - Thomas B. Roberts
  • The Psychedelic Renaissance - Dr Ben Sessa
  • The New Science of Psychedelics - David Jay Brown
  • Brotherhood of the screaming abyss - Dennis McKenna
  • Psychedelic Shamanism - Jim DeKorne     
  • Psychedelic Trips for the Mind - Paul Krassner
  • Psychedelics Encyclopedia by Peter Stafford
  • Sacred Plant Medicine : The Wisdom in Native American Herbalism - Stephen Harrod Buhner
  • Soma : Divine Mushroom of Immortality - R. Gordon Wasson
  • Persephone's Quest - R. Gordon Wasson, Stella Kramrisch, Carl Ruck, Jonathan Ott
  • The Great Shark Hunt : Strange Tales from a Strange Time  - Hunter S. Thompson
  • Sisters of the Extreme - Various
  • Cosmic Trigger I : Final Secret of the Illuminati - Robert Anton Wilson
  • What the Dormouse Said - John Markoff
  • The Road of Excess : A History of Writers on Drugs - Marcus Boon
  • The Joyous Cosmology : Adventures in the Chemistry of Conciousness - Alan Watts
  • The Road to Eleusis - R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann
  • Are You Experienced ? - Ken Johnson
  • The Secret Chief - Myron J. Stolaroff
  • The Natural Mind - Andrew T. Weil M.D.
  • Earth Ascending - Ph.D. Jose Arguelles
  • States of Consciousness - Charles Tart
  • The Private Sea : LSD & the Search for God - William Braden
  • Transfiguration - Alex Grey
  • Storming Heaven : LSD and the American Dream - Jay Stevens
  • The Teachings of Don Juan ( series ) - Carlos Castaneda
  • Psychedelic : Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960s - David Rubin
  • Tryptamine Palace : 5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad - James Oroc 
  • Electrical Banana : Masters of Psychedelic Art - Norman Hathaway, Daniel Nadel
  • The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes : The Art of Alan Aldridge - Alan Aldridge
  • Art of the Dead - Phil Cushway
  • High Art : A History of the Psychedelic Poster - Ted Owen
  • Sex, Rock 'n' Roll & Op. Illusions - Victor Moscoso
  • Visionary Plant Consciousness - J. P. Harpignies
  • Yellow Submarine.. the Beatles (hardcover) - Charlie Gardner
  • Hallucinogenic Plants (A Golden Guide) - Richard Evans Schultes, Elmer W. Smith
  • Ecstasy : The MDMA Story - Bruce Eisner, Peter Stafford, Stanley Krippner
  • Codex Seraphinianus - Luigi Serafini
  • Art Forms in Nature - Ernst Haeckel
  • Salvia Divinorum : Doorway to Thought Free Awareness - J. D. Arthur
  • Mushroom Wisdom : How Shamans Cultivate Spiritual Consciousness - Martin W. Ball
  • Ayahuasca in My Blood : 25 Years of Medicine Dreaming - Peter Gorman
  • Ayahuasca Reader -  Luis Eduardo Luna, Steven F. White
  • Cleansing the Doors of Perception - Huston Smith
  • Sacred Mushrooms : Secrets of Eleusis - Carl A. P. Ruck
  • Etidorpha The End of Earth - John Uri Lloyd
  • Psychedelic Healing - Neal M. Goldsmith
  • Decoding Eternal Tales : Psychedelic Art of John Thompson - John Thompson
  • Global Tribe : Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance - Graham St. John
  • Orange Sunshine - Nicholas Schou
  • The Art of Peter Max - Charles A. Riley, Peter Max
  • Illuminatus - Robert Venosa
  • LSD Psychotherapy - Stanislav Grof
  • The Futurological Congress : From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy - Stanislaw Lem
  • Grudge Punk - John McNee
  • Vurt / Pollen - Jeff Noon
  • Visions of a Huichol Shaman - Peter T. Furst
  • The Shaman's Mirror : Visionary Art of the Huichol
  • Trout's Notes on San Pedro & Related Trichocereus Species - Keeper of the Trout
  • Left in the Dark - Tony Wright, Graham Gynn   
  • Entangled - Graham Hancock
  • Enter Through the Image - L. Caruana
  • The Art of the Fillmore : 1966-1971 - Gayle Lemke, Bill Graham
  • Memoirs of an ExHippie : Seven Years in the Counterculture - Robert A. Roskind   
  

Posted on 18.6.13 by PsyAmb TAG : , | 4 Comments ( ADD NEW COMMENT )

4 comments :

Anonymous said... @ 24 June, 2013

Sacred Mushroom & The Cross by John Allegro

Anonymous said... @ 04 August, 2013

Electric Jesus by Jonathan Phillips, an exellent autobiographical book about a young urban American man initiating himself into psychedelic consciousness and its subculture.

Anonymous said... @ 08 July, 2014

Is this list in order from your most favorite books to least?

Anonymous said... @ 25 June, 2015

I only see a handful of novels on your list. "Lapse of Reason" is being released July 1, 2015. It is a funny adventure that begins and ends with a mushroom trip and explores Ayahuasca in between. This is tongue in cheek fun, strongly themed on psychedelics. Please visit my site to find the book and see my writing.

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